Federal Bar Association Continuing Legal Education Program on Nazi Looted Art

Murder, Mystery & Masterpieces: Legal Implications of World War II Stolen Art

 

http://www.mylawcle.com/product/murder-mystery-masterpieces-ethical-implications-world-war-ii-stolen-art/

September 11, 2014 | 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm EST.

The problem of unrestituted Nazi looted art is one facing museums, governments and private collectors around the world. In 1998 the issue hit the front pages of the world press when District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s seized two works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This seizure led to the U.S. State Department under the Clinton Administration to convene forty-four countries and prominent art world players to sign on to the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.
In the wake of the Washington Conference, many countries created commissions to oversee restitution of Nazi looted art. The Federal Bar Association in its 2014 Issues Agenda called on Congress to establish a commission on Nazi looted art. Join Ray Dowd as he discusses recent federal litigation and international developments involving the unfinished business of World War II and the legacy of the Holocaust. Learn why the Federal Bar Association has urged Congress to take action.

 Speaker

1.5 CLE Credit Hours

Agenda

Raymond J. Dowd is a partner in the law firm of Dunnington Bartholow & Miller LLP in New York City. He authors Copyright Litigation Handbook (West 7th Ed. 2013-2014)(updated annually). He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Federal Bar Association, having served as General Counsel (2011-2012), Vice President for the Second Circuit (2008-2013), President of the Southern District of New York Chapter (2006-2008) and on the Government Relations Committee (2010-2013). From 2013-2014 Mr. Dowd served as President of Network of Bar Leaders, a coalition of over fifty bar associations in Metropolitan New York. In 2013 he was appointed to serve on the Planning Committee for the Second Circuit Judicial Conference titled “Cybersecurity in an Age of Cyberterrorism”.
His law practice centers on litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts, arbitration and mediation. Notable cases in which he has acted as lead counsel involve art law, copyrights, trademarks, cybersquatting, privacy, trusts and decedents estates, licensing, corporate and real estate transactions. He has litigated questions of Austrian, Canadian, French, German, Italian, Russian and Swiss law.
Mr. Dowd lectures frequently on copyright and art-related topics. He was selected for an expert panel in the 2009 Prague Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets and has lectured in many venues including the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the San Francisco War Memorial and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In 2007 he co-founded the Art Litigation and Dispute Resolution Institute at New York County Lawyers’ Association.
Mr. Dowd is a graduate of Manhattan College (B.A. International Studies cum laude 1986) and Fordham Law School (1991) where he served on the Fordham International Law Journal. He speaks French and Italian.

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 Copyright law, fine art and navigating the courts. All practice, no theory.
Copyright Litigation Handbook (Thomson Reuters Westlaw 2012-2013) by Raymond J. Dowd 

Art Law for Museums, Galleries, Artists and Arts Administrators at the High Museum of Art Atlanta Georgia Join Me on May 3 2013

 

VISUAL ARTS AND THE LAW: CUTTING EDGE LEGAL ISSUES FOR MUSEUMS,

GALLERIES, ARTISTS AND ARTS ADMINISTRATORS

 

Friday May 3, 2013

Hill Auditorium, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

AGENDA

Program Chair, Lisa F. Moore, Esq. Principal, The Moore Firm, LLC, Past Chair, Entertainment and Sports Law Section, State Bar of Georgia, Intermediate Past Executive Director of Georgia Lawyers for the Arts, Adjunct Professor, Emory University School of Law

8:00 -8:30am Registration and Continental Breakfast (All attendees must check in upon arrival. A removable jacket or sweater is recommended).

8:45am Welcome and Opening Remarks,

Lisa F. Moore, Esq., Program Chair, The Moore Firm, LLC

Gillian O’Nan, Esq., Executive Director, Georgia Lawyers for the Arts

9:00am Appropriation Art, Fair Use and the Intersection of the First Amendment and the US Copyright Act

Michael Landau, Esq., Copyright Professor, Georgia State College of Law

Andrew Pequignot, Esq., Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton , LLP, Atlanta

10:00am Trademark Law for Visual Artists and Arts Administrators

James Trigg, Esq., Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, LLP, Atlanta

11:00-11:15am Break

11:15am-12:30pm Recent Legal Developments in Arts and Antiquities

Robert A. Horn, Esq., New York

12:30-1:15pm Lunch (included in registration fee)

 

1:15-2:15pm Provenance and Appraisals: Fakes, Frauds, Authenticity Boards and Litigation in State and Federal Court

James Martin, Orion Analytical LLC, Williamstown, Massachusetts (TBC)

Jane Cofer, Art Matters, Atlanta

Lisa F. Moore, Esq., Program Chair

2:15-3:15pm Lost and Stolen Art: International and Domestic Protection and Regulation

Raymond J. Dowd, Esq., Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller, LLP, New York

3:15pm-4:30pm Tax, Employment and Contract Considerations for Museums and Galleries

Nathan A. Hartman, JD, MTS, Hartman Private Law, LLC

Evan H. Pontz, Esq., Troutman Sanders, LLP, Atlanta

Liz Wheeler, Esq., The Moore Firm, LLC

4:30pm Adjourn for Cocktail Reception and Private Access to the Current World-Class Exhibit “Frieda & Diego”

 

 

 

VISUAL ARTS AND THE LAW: CUTTING EDGE LEGAL ISSUES FOR MUSEUMS,

GALLERIES, ARTISTS AND ARTS ADMINISTRATORS

 

Friday May 3, 2013

Hill Auditorium, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

 

Cost for Attendance:

$195 -Attorneys

$150 -Museums, Galleries and Arts Administrators

$50-Artists

 

Event Sponsors:

Georgia Lawyers for the Arts, Inc.

The Copyright Society of the USA

The Moore Firm, LLC

 

 

REGISTRATION

 

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Please return this form to Georgia Lawyers for the Arts, Inc.

Fax: (404) 873-4004

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 Copyright law, fine art and navigating the courts. All practice, no theory.
Copyright Litigation Handbook (Thomson Reuters Westlaw 2012-2013) by Raymond J. Dowd 

Nazi Art Looting: Egon Schiele, George Grosz and Stolen Art in U.S. Museums

The Roundtable Presents
Nazi Art Looting: Egon Schiele, George Grosz and Stolen Art in U.S. Museums

Tuesday, March 12, 8:00 PM Illustrated Lecture

National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South
New York, NY 10003

Ray Dowd returns to the NAC, this time to take us on an astonishing visual tour of the latest Nazi looting cases to hit the art world. He queries whether U.S. museums and collectors have betrayed the Allied victory in World War II by holding on to works belonging to persecuted Jewish families. Will the U.S. Supreme Court deal with the issue? A pre-eminent litigator in federal and state courts, Dowd has lectured at venues such as the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the 2009 Holocaust-Era Assets Conference in Prague, and most recently at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He is a partner in the law firm of Dunnington Bartholow & Miller LLP in NYC and is a national officer of the Federal Bar Association. You’ve read about his cases in The New York Times and ArtNews, now get the story first hand.


For further information please contact the National Arts Club at (212) 475-3424

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 Copyright law, fine art and navigating the courts. All practice, no theory.
Copyright Litigation Handbook (Thomson Reuters Westlaw 2012-2013) by Raymond J. Dowd 

Boston Globe: Museum Fine Arts Boston Refuses To Release Research on Kokoschka Stolen From Oskar Reichel

Stolen Kokoschka at MFA Boston: Court Rules Claimants Too Late for Justice

The Boston Globe, in a piece here by veteran reporter Geoff Edgers who has reported on many Nazi art looting scandals involving the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, reports in a rather soft and indirect way that the museum is continuing to conceal its research on how a work by Oskar Kokoschka got from the Jewish Viennese dentist Oskar Reichel in February 1939 to the art dealer Otto Kallir.   Earlier coverage of the case here.

Otto Kallir was profiled in an article Dealer with the Devil by the New York Observer here.

In February 1939, Jews had declared their property to the Nazi Reich.  Vienna was in the grips of Adolph Eichmann, who was systematically despoiling them of all property.

The Boston Globe article states as follows:
She [Reed] does defend the MFA, which she says shares the results of all its Nazi-era provenance research on its website, on gallery labels, and in gallery talks. The only exception is when there is a legal matter that includes correspondence that is privileged.

Her understated approach is typical of Reed. She wants the evidence from her research to speak for itself without telling her boss, MFA deputy director Katherine Getchell, how to respond.
That makes perfect sense to Getchell.

“Her job is not to be a policymaker or decision maker,’’ said Getchell. “We want her focused on research and analysis and looking at the different options.’’

But the Boston Globe has glossed the point.  Victoria Reed has presented no evidence, only the most conclusory "results" of her alleged research.  The Museum of Fine Arts website states as follows here:

Provenance Research
Following this March 2007 claim [to the Kokoschka], the MFA thoroughly reviewed the claim to Two Nudes (Lovers) in accordance with its own Acquisitions Policy as well as the guidelines set forth by the American Association of Museums (AAM), the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), and the Washington Principles of 1998 on Nazi-Confiscated Art. The Museum is committed to determining, on an ongoing basis, whether any work of art in its collection has ever been stolen, confiscated, looted, or otherwise unlawfully appropriated as a result of Nazi persecution without subsequent restitution. A leader in provenance research, the MFA makes ownership information available to the public through its website, mfa.org. During the past decade, the Museum has restituted a number of works of art to their rightful owners based on provenance research.

None of this research has been made public.  Instead, the Museum has published a five paragraph summary of the 'results' of its alleged research.  A sample of this conclusory "research" follows below:

By 1924, Reichel had developed a business relationship with Otto Kallir (b. 1894 - d. 1978), a Jewish art dealer who opened the Neue Galerie in Vienna in 1923. Reichel consigned Two Nudes (Lovers), along with other paintings by Kokoschka, for sale through Kallir in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1938, Kallir fled Vienna and turned the Neue Galerie over to his non-Jewish secretary. He opened a new gallery, the Galerie St. Etienne, in Paris. In February 1939, Reichel transferred ownership of five Kokoschka paintings—including Two Nudes (Lovers) —to Kallir, who exhibited them in his Paris gallery that spring. Later that year, Kallir emigrated to New York and opened a branch of the Galerie St. Etienne there. He exhibited Two Nudes (Lovers) frequently between 1940 and 1945, both in his New York gallery and in traveling exhibitions throughout the United States. From New York, Kallir sent money for the five Kokoschka paintings to Oskar Reichel’s two sons, Raimund and Hans, with whom he was in communication; they were living in South America and the United States, respectively.

Oskar Reichel was a Jew in Adolph Eichmann's Vienna.  His assets were logged and registered with the Nazis.  Nazi law prohibited Jews from making any transfers, and if any transfers were authorized, all of the proceeds went to the Reich.  How on earth could Reichel have tranferred ownership these assets to Kallir?    And even if he did, the 1946 Nullification Act, which voided transactions in property of Nazi persecutees, should have applied.  

Why has the MFA's researcher Victoria Reed failed to present her scholarship for peer review?  Historians are ethically mandated to do so.   Here is an excerpt from the American Historical Association's Statement on Professional Conduct

Professional integrity in the practice of history requires awareness of one's own biases and a readiness to follow sound method and analysis wherever they may lead.Historians should document their findings and be prepared to make available their sources, evidence, and data, including any documentation they develop through interviews. Historians should not misrepresent their sources. They should report their findings as accurately as possible and not omit evidence that runs counter to their own interpretation. They should not commit plagiarism. They should oppose false or erroneous use of evidence, along with any efforts to ignore or conceal such false or erroneous use.
Historians should acknowledge the receipt of any financial support, sponsorship, or unique privileges (including special access to research material) related to their research, especially when such privileges could bias their research findings. They should always acknowledge assistance received from colleagues, students, research assistants, and others, and give due credit to collaborators.

Historians should work to preserve the historical record, and support institutions that perform this crucial service. Historians favor free, open, equal, and nondiscriminatory access to archival, library, and museum collections wherever possible. They should be careful to avoid any actions that might prejudice access for future historians. Although they recognize the legitimacy of restricting access to some sources for national security, proprietary, and privacy reasons, they have a professional interest in opposing unnecessary restrictions whenever appropriate.

For another great example of museums professing to publish research, but in reality concealing it, please check out William D. Cohan's MoMA's Problematic Provenances in this month's ArtNews here

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Alfred Flechtheim Scandal at Museum of Modern Art - MoMA - Continues

I reported previously that the MoMA published a catalog called German Expressionism:The Graphic Impulse by Starr Figura that COMPLETELY eliminated mention of Alfred Flechtheim.

Image of Rudolph Belling's sculpture Portrait of Alfred Flechtheim (1927)

More on Alfred Flechtheim and MoMA's attempts to write him out of art history hereand here

MoMA has perpetrated the fiction that Alfred Flechtheim's gallery was not Aryanized in 1933 because MoMA wishes to shield its collection, particularly the items that were stolen from Alfred Flechtheim, from public scrutiny.   More information on the Nazi taking of Flechtheim's inventory here.

MoMA's website does not even show an image of Belling's Portrait of Alfred Flechtheim, and the MoMA has never told the story of Flechtheim's role as a Nazi persecutee story here.
But after the scandal of publishing the German Expressionism catalog that pretends Flechtheim does not exist, MoMA's website now shows 28 works that it claims were published by Alfred Flechtheim:

That's just completely ridiculous, MoMA's collection has many more works from Flechtheim's 1933 inventory.   As I argued here the provenance of Paul Klee's Pastorale shows that it was likely taken by the Nazi Alexander Voemel from Flechtheim in 1933.

Pastorale (Rhythms) (1927)
Paul Klee (German, born Switzerland. 1879-1940)

1927. Tempera on canvas mounted on wood, 27 1/4 x 20 5/8" (69.3 x 52.4 cm). Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund and exchange

Collection work meeting criteria specified in Introduction.

157.1945

Rudolf Probst (Galerie Neue Kunst Fides; Das Kunsthaus), Dresden/Mannheim. Until 1928

Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin and Düsseldorf, then in London. 1928 – at least 1930 [likely until Flechthem’s death, in March 1937]

(J. B. Neumann (Jsrael Ber Neumann), New York. 1930. Agent for Flechtheim)

(Alex Vömel, Dusseldorf. Former Flechtheim Gallery, became Alex Vömel Gallery from March 1933. [Likely on consignement from Flechtheim, 1933 – 1934])

James Mayor Gallery, London. [Brought to London by Flechtheim when he started to work for the Mayor Gallery, c. 1934.] 1934 – 1935

For sale during Paul Klee exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, 1935

(Paul Klee, Bern. Returned to him from above exhibition, unsold, 1935)

[Likely returned by Klee to Flechtheim in London]

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paris. [Likely acquired/on consignment from Flechtheim] by 1937 - by 1939

Mrs. Stanley B. Resor, New York. By 1941

Nierendorf Gallery (Karl Nierendorf), New York (New York gallery opened in 1937). Acquired from Stanley B. Resor, by 1945

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired from Nierendorf through Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund and exchange, 1945

And astonishingly, after publishing a catalogue for a 2011 German Expressionism exhibition that pretends Flechtheim did not exist, MoMA's website now has the following:
Alfred Flechtheim

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starr Figura, German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 2011

Alfred Flechtheim opened his gallery in 1913, with sponsorship from Paul Cassirer. Became known as the leading dealer in Germany for modern French art, much of it obtained through his friend Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the eminent Parisian gallerist and German émigré. Despite his ambivalence toward contemporary German art, eventually also exhibited a select number of Expressionist, Bauhaus, and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) artists, including Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, George Grosz (under contract from 1925 to 1931), Paul Klee (whom he represented from 1927 to 1933), Oskar Kokoschka, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, and August Macke. Published prints by Grosz, Else Lasker-Schüler, Ludwig Meidner, and many other now less familiar German artists. In 1921 began to issue the cosmopolitan art and culture periodical Der Querschnitt; three years later, sold it to the publishing house Propyläen. Highly successful, particularly in the postwar years, moved his primary operation to Berlin in 1921, and opened branches in Frankfurt and Cologne in 1922. A victim of Nazi anti-Semitism, was forced to emigrate in 1933, and died, impoverished, in London in 1937.

Selected Bibliography

Jentsch, Ralph. Alfred Flechtheim und George Grosz. Bonn: Weidle, 2008.

Peters, Hans Albert, and Stephan von Wiese, eds. Alfred Flechtheim, Sammler, Kunsthändler, Verleger. Exh. cat. Düsseldorf: Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, 1987.

Iris Schmeisser

So it looks like MoMA's website is trying to make it look as if Starr Figura, the one who wrote the catalog that eliminated any mention of Flechtheim, actually did include mention of Flechtheim, but MoMA hired Iris Schmeisser to write the Website's description of Flechtheim.

Alfred Flechtheim's influence on MoMA in its first year of existence was tremendous and remains undocumented by MoMA's pseudo-art historians.  Why doesn't MoMA acknowledge its intellectual and artistic debt to Flechtheim?   And what happens to someone who writes a catalog on German Expressionism who calls Flechtheim AMBIVALENT towards German contemporary art when indeed he was perhaps one of its greatest champions?

Just look at Rudolph Belling's portrait of Alfred Flechtheim, one of which he gave to Harvard to launch what became the Busch-Reisinger collection.   Does that reflect AMBIVALENCE toward German contemporary art?   Why is Belling's sculpture featuring Flechtheim's nose not front and center in the German Expressionism exhibit?

Where the hell is Flechtheim's nose?

Flechtheim's assistant, Curt Valentin, became a Nazi agent and sold massive quantities of Nazi-looted art onto the U.S. market.   Story here

The Belling sculpture of Flechtheim was a "gift" of Curt Valentin to MoMA:

Why won't MoMA photograph and exhibit this artwork?

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Art Litigation: Richard Evans on Looting Art in Wartime

Art in the Time of War | The National Interest

Historian Richard Evans' thoughtful piece on art looting in wartime. It is not surprising that one of the leading scholar of Germany in World War II would turn his attention to art.

Image from the Phoenix Courthouse - Federal Bar Association Presentation on Nazi Art Looting

Raymond J. Dowd, New York - U.S.M.J. Michelle Burns (District of Arizona - Phoenix) - Rob Kohn, Los Angeles 
Image under a quote from Socrates from the presentation at the Richard Meier-designed Sandra Day O'Connor U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona.  Occasion was a presentation co-sponsored by the Phoenix Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and the Federal Bar Association's Federal Litigation Section on Recent Developments in Nazi Art Looting, view the Powerpoint here.


Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

Art Litigation: 9th Circuit Blocks Spain from Laundering Stolen Art in Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain

A major international issue is whether a government can purchase a pile of stolen art and then claim immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act 28 U.S.C. 1604 when it then makes the stolen art a tourist attraction and markets it to Americans.

Under U.S. law, receiving stolen property is a crime.  18 USC 662.

Spain scored a cultural coup in the 1990's by purchasing the tainted Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection which was compiled by a famous Nazi family.  Spain put the art collection into a "foundation" and tried to insulate it from claims from an American Jew named Claude Cassirer whose grandmother Lilly had been spoliated by the Nazis in the widely-reported case Cassirer v. Kingdom of Spain.

Austria did this by creating the "Leopold Foundation" to "own" the Leopold Museum.  These "foundations" are legal fictions set up to shield the stolen art from legal claims in violation of international law.  Creation of the Leopold Foundation violates the Austria State Treaty Article 26 which unconditionally requires Austria to return property stolen from Nazi persecutees.   Art 26 has no time limitations and is a continuing obligation that Austria has spent decades avoiding, with the complicity of the U.S. State Department.  More on Rudolph Leopold and the Leopold Foundation here.  Rather than treating Rudolph Leopold as the serial criminal that he was, purchasing stolen property and laundering provenances over the course of decadek, a fawning international art press lionizes him as a "collector" downplaying the facts that he died on theeve of his criminal trial in the U.S. in the Portrait of Wally case.

Now Spain is in the game by snapping up artworks with creepy Nazi provenance and plastering famous Nazi names all over downtown Madrid.  See

Book Review: NAZI CRIME REVELATIONS RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA MUSEUM


The late collector Heini Thyssen forced himself to forget his family’s Nazi involvement, but so did the countries that vied for his and his father’s pictures in the 1980s. This well documented book gives the details.

By Anna Somers Cocks
Posted 01 March 2007- From The Art Newspaper


It was the Allies themselves, especially the Americans, who decided to let bygones be bygones and help revive the Thyssen empire in the interest of the German economy and opposing the Soviets. Before Berlin was even taken, Thyssen Gas and Water was working with the Allied Military Governor and by 1948, Bremer Vulkan, the Thyssen shipyard that had made U-boats for the Nazis, had orders from the Allies worth DM11.25m. The fact that in 1946, Averell Harriman, who in January 1941 still nominally held the Thyssen shares in their BVHS bank, became Secretary of State for Commerce almost certainly helped the family get back their banking assets.


Forty years pass and in 1986 the word gets out that Heini Thyssen is thinking of moving his collection from the Villa Favorita on Lake Lugano. Countries fall over themselves to get hold of it (including Prime Minister Thatcher—the only time she takes a direct interest in the arts) and the Nazi past never gets mentioned. As Heini intended from the outset—because it was what his new Spanish wife, Tita, wanted—Spain wins, and in 1993 pays $350m for half the collection.

But check out Wikipedia on the Thyssen-Bornemisza family - not a single mention of the fact that the collection was built from stolen artworks and money from a family that ran its own concentration camp:

http://heirs.typepad.com/heirs_observations_on_pro/2007/05/book_review_naz.html

In addition, Heini’s brother Stephan, who remained in Germany during the war, was chairman of the board of MABAG, a company that sank mine shafts, built machinery, including parts for the V1 and V2 rockets that bombed Britain, and built petrol storage installations. Together with IG Farben, it constructed the Reich’s main fuel-storage depot in the Kohnstein mountains. By the end of 1943 there were more than 10,000 forced labourers living underground and by October 1944, it had become a concentration camp in its own right, Mittelbau, which would hold 60,000 prisoners of whom 20,000 were worked to death. In addition, a US government memo in the Washington Archives says that in 1943, one in two miners in the Thyssen’s Walsum mine was a slave labourer.

So it's a good thing that on August 12, 2010 the Ninth Circuit decided en banc that Spain's Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation is not immune from suit in the United States under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) 28 USC 1605.

The Ninth Circuit decided two good things: 1. that Claude Cassirer was not required to "exhaust" his remedies against Spain in a Spanish court prior to bringing a claim in the US and 2. that Spain's possession of expropriated property together with its commercial activities in the US (e.g., selling pictures of the stolen work to American consumers) exempted Spain from claiming sovereing immunity to suit.

Below is the YouTube video where attorney Thad Stauber of Nixon Peabody gives the Ninth Circuit's panel a "shout out" from William Barron of Smith Gambrell, who represents both Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Leopold Foundation in the Portrait of Wally case.  The argument is really worth watching, kudos to the judge who analogizes the case to the "pawn shop" scenario.




The Ninth Circuit decision below:

Art Litigation: Cassirer v Kingdom of Spain - Camille Pissarro

 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook from West here  

Art Litigation: Nazi-Era Art Catalogs To Be Digitized By Getty - Tool for Researching Nazi Art Looting

Getty museum has received a National Endowment for the Humanities and German Research Foundation grants to digitize German art catalogs from 1930 - 1945 and to make them available to the public.  Press release here.   This is a step in the right direction and will provide an excellent tool for tracing artworks looted during the Nazi era.  More will be necessary, since pre-war catalalogues show where property was before World War II and at the time Jewish people and other persecutees bought it and is often critical in establishing provenance in favor of families who were looted.

Great step in the right direction.  Los Angeles Times story here.http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/07/getty-receives-grant-money-for-german-art-project.html


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On the Eve of Criminal Trial in U.S., Rudolph Leopold, Collector of Artworks Stolen from Jews, Dies in Vienna

Egon Schiele's Dead City

Art collector Rudolph Leopold died today in Vienna, Austria.

In 1998, D.A. Robert Morgenthau seized two stolen artworks at the Museum of Modern Art that Leopold had loaned to the MoMA:  Egon Schiele's Dead City and Schiele's Portrait of Wally.

Leopold was scheduled to stand criminal trial this summer before the Hon. Loretta A. Preska in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York after Judge Preska determined that Portrait of Wally was stolen.

But MoMA returned the stolen Dead City to the Leopold Museum in Austria.  The Austrian Provenance Commission's head Dr. Christoph Bazil, has repeatedly promised to investigate Dead City's provenance and those of other Schiele's stolen from Fritz Grunbaum that are in the Leopold and Albertina Museums in Vienna, but after 11 years, no report has issued.

Austria purchased Leopold's collection and made Leopold director of the Leopold Museum for life.  It remains to be seen whether Austria will carry through on its promises to investigate and return the stolen works in Leopold's collection.

Article 26 of the 1955 Austrian State Treaty requires Austria to return all property stolen from Nazi persecutees.  Yet Austria has not only failed to return the property, but repeatedly set up enabling legislation designed to frustrate claims and then let the legislation lapse.

 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook from West here  

Alfred Flechtheim's Portrait By Rudolph Belling: Image Not Available at MoMA

The MoMA has not made an image of this bronze sculpture of Alfred Flechtheim available on the internet.  The sculpture was a 1950 gift of the Nazi agent Curt Valentin.   Aside from noting that the sculpture was a gift of Curt Valentin, no other provenance is given.

American museums agreed to publish images and provenances in 1998 to help Holocaust victims trace artworks.  Why has MoMA shirked this duty and no one complains?  Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn are on the Board of the MoMA - why have they not insisted on transparency on European works entering the U.S. after 1933 that were created before 1945?   Is there really no political will in this country to follow the Washington Principles?

There is not even an English-language Wikipedia page on Alfred Flechtheim, Germany's most important pre-war dealer in modern art.

Why has Flechtheim's image and history been obliterated?  Why have America's art historians and historians failed to honor Flechtheim's role in 20th Century art?   The artists of his time celebrated him, yet US art historians have not even granted him a footnote in history.

My earlier posts on Alfred Flechtheim here.

Above you see an essay in Italian by Konstantin Akinsha that you can find here called "Alfred Flechtheim's Nose:  Anti-Semitism and images of Nazi propaganda"

Above, from the Akinsha article, you see Alfred Flechtheim pictured with a cigar at the 1937 "Degenerate Art" Exhibition in Nuremberg, surrounded by the modern "degenerate art" that the Nazis hated.

The Nazis knew that Alfred Flechtheim was at the center of everything Jewish, modern and artistic that they hated.

So why has the MoMA and its confreres in the American Association of Museums obliterated Flechtheim's image from MoMA's website and his biography from the history of modern art?  Why do American art historians not discuss and celebrate his life and contributions and discuss the fabulous inventory that he had when his gallery was Aryanized by the Nazi Alexander Voemel in 1933?

Is there not one honest art historian working in an American museum today?  The damage Hitler caused in obliterating Jewish culture and contributions must be fought not by lawyers, but by art lovers and historians of good conscience who come forward and say enough is enough.  Pretending that Alfred Flechtheim did not exist is unacceptable.

Below, a beautiful work by Paul Klee that MoMA acquired in 1945.

Pastorale (Rhythms) (1927)


Paul Klee (German, born Switzerland. 1879-1940)
1927. Tempera on canvas mounted on wood, 27 1/4 x 20 5/8" (69.3 x 52.4 cm). Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund and exchange
Collection work meeting criteria specified in Introduction.

157.1945


Rudolf Probst (Galerie Neue Kunst Fides; Das Kunsthaus), Dresden/Mannheim. Until 1928


Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin and Düsseldorf, then in London. 1928 – at least 1930 [likely until Flechthem’s death, in March 1937]

(J. B. Neumann (Jsrael Ber Neumann), New York. 1930. Agent for Flechtheim)

(Alex Vömel, Dusseldorf. Former Flechtheim Gallery, became Alex Vömel Gallery from March 1933. [Likely on consignement from Flechtheim, 1933 – 1934])

James Mayor Gallery, London. [Brought to London by Flechtheim when he started to work for the Mayor Gallery, c. 1934.] 1934 – 1935

For sale during Paul Klee exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, 1935

(Paul Klee, Bern. Returned to him from above exhibition, unsold, 1935)

[Likely returned by Klee to Flechtheim in London]

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paris. [Likely acquired/on consignment from Flechtheim] by 1937 - by 1939

Mrs. Stanley B. Resor, New York. By 1941

Nierendorf Gallery (Karl Nierendorf), New York (New York gallery opened in 1937). Acquired from Stanley B. Resor, by 1945

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired from Nierendorf through Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund and exchange, 1945

New York Times Finally Starts Reporting On Nazi Looted Art Stories

The New York Times has steadfastly ignored the Nazi-looted art scandals confronting U.S. Museums.  Finally, Robert Edsel, author of Monuments Men has finally broken through and gotten them to report something (even though the story was reported elsewhere long ago).  The link is below.
Better late than never, and let's just pretend that this is not an old story.  Now let's see if the Old Gray Lady will start covering the stories right under its nose that are not spoonfed by some fancy publicist.

If it takes a Texas Republican to get Michael Kimmelman to start paying attention to all of the artworks stolen from Jews that are in US museums, again I say Bravo, Edsel!

See my earlier posts about Amb. Stuart Eizenstat's efforts to set up a US Restitution Commission and Robert Edsel's remarkable publicity drive.

Abroad - 13th Linz Album of Hitler’s Returned to Germany - NYTimes.com

Audio Debate: Should the US State Dept Form A Commission To Restitute Stolen Art Now In US Museums?

El Lissitzky's Proun 2 (1920) - Stolen from Germany (Provenance below)

An amazing debate that I was fortunate enough to attend earlier this year is now available in audio.  I hope that the Ethics Committee of the American Association of Museums, the American Association of Museum Directors and the College Art Association gives this a listen.   The link is here, courtesy of the American Society of International Law (you need to scroll down to the Friday program).

Tragically, the American museum community has played deaf dumb and blind when it comes to researching the stolen artworks in their collection:  artworks of European origin that entered the US after 1933 but were created before 1945.   After stuffing their collections with stolen artworks, they are hoping that the remaining Holocaust survivors will die before they are forced to reveal what is in their collections and return it to the rightful owners.   Hitler's actions were illegal for the winners of World War II: except to US museums who maintain that stripping Germany of its Jewish culture was perfectly legal.  Three generations of "art historians" have been produced in this nation's universities: almost no one has spoken out.  Is the issue cowardice or ignorance?

If US museums don't give back stolen artworks, the rest of Europe never will either.

Cultural Heritage and the Arts Interest Group: Wrestling the Dead Hand of History: Perspectives on a Proposed State Department Commission on Nazi Looted Art


Moderator: Jennifer Anglim Kreder Panelists: Stuart Eizenstat, Charles Goldstein, J. Christian Kennedy, Lucille Roussin

Date: Friday

$9.99
 
***Provenance for Proun 2 (Construction) at Philadelphia Museum of Art

1920
El Lissitzky (Eleazar Lissitzky), Russian, 1890 - 1941




Städtisches Museum Halle, Germany, purchased 1929 [1]; Hanover Provinzialmuseum/Landesmuseum, Germany, on loan from Städtisches Museum Halle, 1929(?)-1937 [2]; confiscated by the National Socialist authorities, 1937, EK register number 14283 [3]; with Karl Buchholz, Berlin; with Curt Valentin, Buchholz Gallery, New York, 1939 [4]; sold to A. E. Gallatin, New York, 1939 [5]; bequest to PMA, 1952. 1. See Andreas Hüneke, Die faschistische Aktion "Entartete Kunst" 1937 in Halle (Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle, 1987), p. 38, no. 42; and Peter Nisbet, ed., El Lissitzky 1890-1941, exh. cat., 1987, Proun inventory no. 14, p. 160. The acquisition is also noted and illustrated in Museum der Gegenwart 1 (1930/1931), p. 13. The painting was one in a total of 46 oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors by Lissitzky purchased by the Halle museum in that year (see Im Kampf um die moderne Kunst: Das Schicksal einer Sammlung in der 1.Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, exh. cat., Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, [1985], p. 48 and p. 52). 2. Alexander Dorner, the director of the Hanover Provinzialmuseum until his forced resignation by the Nazis in 1936, recollected that Mondrian's "Composition in Blue" (1952-61-87) and Lissitzky's "Proun 2C," both later purchased by Gallatin, hung in the famous Abstract Gallery (Abstraktes Kabinett) of the Hanover museum designed 1927-28 by Lissitzky (Cauman, The Living Museum, 1958, p. 55, repr. p. 62 and p. 63, respectively, both horizontally). The information that the painting was on loan to, rather than owned by, the Hanover museum is supplied by a 1958 Art News article in which the author, Ella Winter, quotes a letter from Dorner's widow stating that 'the Lissitzkys you refer to hung in the Abstract Gallery; it [the gallery] was destroyed by the Nazis while my husband was opening the first Munich exhibition in London. When he returned he found that unique and beautiful room dismantled and himself accused of promoting "degenerate" art. The Lissitzky on loan was sold . . . and is now in the Philadelphia Museum' [ellipsis is the author's] (see "Lissitzky: A Revolutionary Out of Favor," April 1958, p. 63). In addition, this painting is not listed in the 1930 catalog of works owned by the Hanover Provinzialmuseum (Katalog der Kunstsammlungen im Provinzialmuseum zu Hannover, Bd. 1, 1930). 3. The "EK" (Entartete Kunst) or confiscation register number 14283 is stamped on a sticker on the back of the painting (the original confiscation register is housed at the Zentrales Staatsarchiv Potsdam; see Barron, ed., "Degenerate Art", exh. cat., 1991, p. 132, n. 15). It is clear from the letter quoted in the Art News article cited above that the Nazis confiscated the painting from the Hanover museum. It is not certain where the painting was stored after confiscation; Mondrian's "Composition with Blue" (PMA 1952-61-87), also confiscated from Hanover, was stored at the Schloss Niederschönhausen, the Nazi sales repository for "Entartete Kunst" confiscated from museums. 4. Four prominent German dealers were appointed to market the inventory of confiscated works, including Karl Buchholz. According to the EK register, this painting was assigned to Buchholz, owner of the Buchholz Gallery in Berlin. He was the mentor and pre-war partner of Curt Valentin (1902-1954) who named the New York gallery he opened in 1937 in Buchholz' honor. Between 1934 and 1937 Valentin ran his own gallery in Buchholz' dealership in Berlin (Nicholas, Rape of Europa, p. 3, 24; Yeide, AAM Guide to Provenance Research, p. 239, 290). Valentin, a German citizen, left Germany in 1937 to go into exile. However, he maintained contact with Buchholz, frequently travelling to Germany, where he acquired works from the Schloss Niederschönhausen and the Lucerne 1939 auction. According to Nicholas he "was able to obtain from this source [Germany] much of the inventory which established him as a major New York dealer" (Nicholas, p. 24). Hüneke, underscoring the connection between Buchholz and Valentin, refers to the latter's New York gallery as "a ready-made platform from which Buchholz could sell to America" (see "Missing Masterpieces," in Degenerate Art, p. 129). 5. Receipt from the Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin to Gallatin dated August 24, 1939, for purchase of both the Lissitzky and Mondrian's "Composition with Blue" (stamped "Paid" August 31, 1939).